John Booth says 2014 Marussia-Ferrari deal unrelated to Bianchi

Jules Bianchi

Marussia team principal John Booth says their deal with Ferrari regarding 2014 power units is unrelated to Jules Bianchi’s future.

Bianchi is a member of the Ferrari driver academy and has raced for Marussia this season.

But Booth insists that the two deals are not related and that the partnership between Ferrari and Marussia does not necessarily mean that Bianchi will remain with the team into 2014.

“First of all, with Jules, he is a Ferrari young driver but the two deals are totally separate,” Booth said. “The powertrain deal has no bearing on Jules’ future at all.”

Booth nonetheless wishes to retain both Bianchi and Max Chilton into 2014.

“I’d like to keep them both for next year,” he said.

“At the moment it depends on a variety of (contract) options and option expires and things like that.”

“But we don’t intend to leave our decision as late as we did for this year. We’re hoping to be a bit more comfortable for this year.”

Marussia did not confirm their line-up until the final pre-season test, when Bianchi replaced initial signing Luiz Razia.

Razia himself had already stepped into the void following Marussia’s split with Timo Glock.

Booth admits that he has been impressed by his rookies.

“We took a massive gamble with two race novices, they both had a fair amount of mileage in F1 cars, so it wasn’t like they were novices to Formula 1.

“But it’s been really impressive as to how few mistakes they’ve both made.”

“With two rookies it could have finished in a right old mess, but you can count on one hand the mistakes made between them.”

Marussia is currently in tenth place in the world championship, with Bianchi’s thirteenth place finish in Malaysia their best result of the season.